#gratitudeNow: Together Breakfast

I’ve been friends with Andrea for over a decade.  If you listen to the podcast, you’ve heard her. (She’s on a number of them including my all time favorite episode, number nine.)​

Andrea and I have this wonderful thing we do for one another.  We are sort of philosophical sounding boards for each other.​

She lives far away, in Michigan, and we don’t see one another very often. But here’s how this process goes down. We won’t talk for months, sometimes even years, and then out of the blue, reach for one another again. Sometimes I initiate that, sometimes she does.​

Then, when we talk, all the time and distance just fall away. And, weirdly, we each find that whatever it is that’s front and center in our life or mind, whatever thing it is that we are working on, the other person has something wise to say about it, or has just been going through it themselves.​

Which is also why we are ​tremendously ​good at calling each other on our own negative habits. We will say to each other, “so, how’s that working for you?”  This is ​always​ followed by the person asked laughing (a little bitterly) and feeling grateful. ​

My breakfast is on the left.  

Yesterday was one of those times. Even though I was here in Virginia, and she was in Michigan, we had breakfast together. 

We laughed together, ate eggs together, and caught up.  I’m so grateful for my friendship with Andrea. I love her very much.  

#gratitudeNow: On Cats and Submissives

This is my boycat, Yang.  I've had him and his sister, Yin almost 13 years now.  They've been with me their whole lives.

There's this routine they do with me, every single morning.  Part of that routine has to do with when I get out of the shower, and I'm getting dressed.  I lay my clothes out on the bed, sit down and begin to dress.  

Yin sits nearby and begins to meow at me, urgently, so I don't forget that this time is also, crucially, mere moments before the high pinnacle of the day, the moment at which I give them wet cat food for breakfast.

Yang plays a part in this ritual too.  He sits next to me, and butts his head against me, rubbing it into my arm, my back, my side, my leg, any part of me he can get at, in an earnest effort to let me know, just in case I didn't know, how very much he loves me, how great he thinks I am, how he wishes me joy and sucess and good fortune all day, and... to not forget to give him and his sister their breakfast.

I turned to him this morning, and petted him, and reassured him, "Oh buddy," I said, "I know, I already know."

Yang looked at me earnestly and kept on head butting me.

This is when I was struck with a powerful epiphany.  There is a giant venn overlap between my cats, and my own submissive tendencies.

My cats are beautiful, graceful, powerful creatures.  They can run fast, leap high, (granted, not as fast nor as high as they used to), are alert, clever, wholly magnificent creatures. At the same time, they are neurotic, insecure, peculiar, and very funny.  No matter how many times (thousands) we have repeated this morning ritual, they are never blasé about it.  Each morning they're this heady mixture of anxious, nervous, fearful and excited for their breakfast.  They go from graceful to goofball.

I am just like this about the things that Missy and Alissa do with and to me.  

Every time Missy is going to spank me, or I think I might need a spanking, I become this hesitant, excited version of myself.  

Every time I want Alissa to change my diaper, I rub against her like one of my cats, get all clingy and up in her business.

At the prospect of physical intimacy it's like this switch flips in my head, and all the other things I am recede, fade.  My lifelong obsession with writing? Off.  My daily practice of mindful contemplation?  Nowhere.  

I broadcast to my partners, loudly, about these pending and very necessary things.  The familiar dance we are potentially about to do again becomes EVERYTHING.  In that moment, what I am with them, to them, it's all that I am.

Powerful.

It gives me maybe just a little more patience with the cats, and with myself.

#gratitudeNow: I shall project a world

A loooong time ago, I read this amazing book, The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon.  It's this crazy story, about a woman, Oedipa Maas, who maybe gets involved in a giant conspiracy.

I read the book over 20 years ago, and it's left an indelible mark on my soul.  It's at times funny, frightening, and sort of crazy making.  

One of my favorite quotes from the book is something Oedipa says when she first begins to unearth this conspiracy.  "Shall I project a world?"

That is, will she take these several disparate "facts" she's stumbled across, and knit them together into a cohesive narrative, use them to extrapolate and form something concrete, go from vague notion to some degree of certainty?

Spoiler alert, she does.

One of the reasons this quote has stuck with me for so long, and so strongly, is that it's a pretty spot on description of part of my writing process.  When I begin to write about characters, I imagine them, gradually seeing more and more details of how they are, who they are, how they live.  Often that means I learn things about their past, their family and friends, their living conditions.  There's a huge amount that goes on "off screen" for my characters, that informs how they act, and the choices they make.

This house, right here.

This morning I was working on a new Cam & Eileen story, "Kiss The Cook", for my patreon site.  One of the things I realized was that I needed to know more about where they lived.  I had this vague idea of about Eileen's place, overlooking Kerry Park, in Seattle.  But today, I actually got online, and found the house itself.

I also found the small, affordable place Cam was living in too.  Knowing the two homes helps me to know both the characters better, too.  

I heard this thing once, someone said about being bipedal.  Part of the definition of being a biped is having two feet, and using them to walk upon the ground.  The ground a biped walks upon is as much a part of how they are defined, as the feet with which they walk upon it.

I just love this process, this discovery.  It's a gourmet sort of pretending.  These people, their lives, where and how they live are very, very real to me.  I'm grateful for the experience of working with them.

#gratitudeNow:Pause, Repeat

So I was freaking myself out this morning.  

Panic cat is panicking.

I'm learning this shiny, new-to-me technical thing at work.  I largely understand it, but I keep bumping up against little pieces of it that don't make sense to me, and then spinning myself out into a frothy mix of panic, anxiety, and doomsaying.

Then I got pinged by my friend Matti, who was asking me to remind him of the 4 Necessities.  That is, the four things I have told him before that are absolutely mandatory and which you cannot help but to do them.  Talking to him about them reminded me that they apply to me too.

Here they are:

1. You must exist. Because you already do. If you're questioning whether you have to or not, WHO'S DOING THE ASKING?
2. You must age.  Because you are. You're moving forward in time, 1 second per second, relentlessly. Can't stop it.
3. You must change. Because you do. Literally every moment of every day. The you of 3 three minutes ago is different at a molecular level, even if it's only partially.
4. You must, eventually, die.  Because like all living things, you will.

Every other single thing except these 4 things is utterly and completely optional.

Whew.  I'm glad he asked me to remind him.  I needed the reminder myself.  Now that it's on my mind, I'm able to step back from my full-on-freak-out and see that I don't have to doubt myself.  I can just put my head down and move forward as best I can.

Mindfulness is work.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to it.

#gratitudeNow:Feed the soul

I’m doing something today I haven’t done in literally years.  I’m at lunch, and working on a writing project. 

I don’t want to get into exactly WHAT that project is.  But I just want to say how very glad I am that I’m doing it.  I had put my fiction work on hold for other reasons, for a while now. 

But I’m trying something new.  This is as a means to not ignore this vital part of my life.  It’s a new way to write, and to perform, and to make money too.  Making money at it is important to me both as a validation of the work itself, and also as a personal validation of the time I’m making to do this.  My time is precious.  I’m glad to see the value of using it again for this.

I’m thrilled about the whole thing.